


Unmarked

by katalizi



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Philinda - Freeform, Philinda AU Challenge, Soulmates AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 11:49:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3446063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katalizi/pseuds/katalizi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not everyone was born with the Mark and quite frankly Melinda May was more than happy to be one of those lucky few.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unmarked

Not everyone was born with the Mark and quite frankly Melinda May was more than happy to be one of those lucky few. She had seen the pain and frustration it had inflicted upon others as they spent their lives frantically searching for their lost other half, their soulmate who had been stripped from them in the unknowing time long before they were born. Not that Melinda was completely without sentiment. She had seen the results when they did find each other, had witnessed first hand the joy of discovery and the sheer, overwhelming relief both Marks were compared and found to be identical. Heck, even her own parents were soulmates, but then again perhaps that was the reason why she was so relieved to be spared the unavoidable attachment a Mark would present. Every time she looked at the faded grey smudge on the back of her mother’s neck and struggled to recall something - anything - about her father, who was killed before she was even born, she sent up a prayer of thanks that she’d never be in her mother’s shoes. She’d never be weighed down by an unattainable, unknowable soulmate.

Another useful byproduct of having no Mark was her ability to focus on other things, like school for example. While everyone else was comparing Marks and making up elaborate fantasies about what their other half was doing right now, Melinda was in the library, studying, or out excelling at one of her many after school actives such as martial arts and field and track. Just before she’d graduated from high school she’d been approach by S.H.I.E.L.D about attending the Academy and had leapt at the chance despite - or perhaps because - of her mother’s disapproval. She had a sneaking feeling her mother never wanted her to follow down her particular career path, but it was too late now. The recruiting officers and all the many wonderful stories of S.H.I.E.L.D that she’d heard over the years that made her decision one of the easiest in her life.

It was at the Academy that she first met Phil Coulson. At first she hadn’t paid too much attention to him, didn’t pay too much attention to anyone really, being too busy with the incredible work load and all the fascinating things that she was itching to learn about. However, halfway through the first semester she and Phil were teamed up to work on a project about Public Relations and Cover Ups. At first she resented this - she hated group projects - but as they worked together Phil not only proved himself to be competent, but also highly intelligent and just as hard working as her - something she appreciated. After the project finished she decided to continued and build this budding friendship, glad to find a mind on campus that was as tuned in as hers. But it wasn’t only that. It was his open, honest nature, his kindness, his sense of humour. The way he noticed she preferred tea to coffee without her having to make a point of it, how he never pushed her to stay up late because he knew she was a morning person, how he was probably the first person to ever describe her as ‘warm’. It didn’t hurt that he was rather good looking, that he had beautiful, soft blue eyes and arms that she just knew would be a perfect fit for her. For the first time in her life Melinda began wondering what it would be like to have some sort of relationship with someone that wasn’t purely platonic. 

Of course this all came crashing down one night when he revealed his Mark.

They had both just finished a particularly gruelling essay and were now lounging in Phil’s room at the student lodgings, each with a bottle of contraband beer and a happy lethargy that comes at the end of a long haul. They’d been talking about nothing in particular when Phil suddenly sat his beer on his desk and leaned forward.

“Melinda,” he said, anxious all of a sudden. “Can I show you something?”

His worried tone sobered her up right away and she stiffened. “What?”

Her jaw nearly dropped in shock as he started to unbutton his shirt, exposing his chest. “Don’t freak out!” he begged. “It’s not what you think, I just - does this look familiar to you?”

There, right above his heart, was a stark black mark, a circle with two wavy lines cutting all the way through.

Melinda’s heart dropped like a lead weight and Phil saw this instantly, quickly buttoning up his shirt again. “So I guess that’s a no?” he said with a breath of shaky laughter that neither of them believed. “I’m sorry, I just thought …”

“I don’t have a Mark,” she blurted out. Phil blinked.

“Wow,” he said. “That’s really rare.” Melinda just shrugged and rubbed at the back of her neck as he continued. “I’m sorry, again, to just rip my shirt off there … I’m always jealous of the guys that have it on their wrist or something but, what can you do? My mother always told me having it over my heart was good luck, a sure sign of finding my soulmate, but … well, it’s never fun to take off your shirt and compare Marks. Specially in public.”

He was rambling, but she just let him go. He had a Mark. There was some unknown person out there in the world who already had a claim on him. And it wasn’t her.

She smiled. It hurt her face. “It’s alright.”

“I just … I just thought it would be you.” He sounded so lost as he said this and suddenly an unbearable ache formed in Melinda’s chest. She covered it with an eye roll and a sarcastic grin.

“I’m sure we’ll both survive this,” she said coolly, desperately trying to ignore the look of hurt that flashed in Phil’s eyes.

She all but ran from the room and they never spoke about his Mark again.

Years passed and the friendship between Melinda and Phil grew until it became one of the most important relationships in Melinda’s life. So what if she was Unmarked? She sometimes felt that a lot of people, in their fever to find their soulmate, forgot that there were more kinds of love in the world than just romantic love. And she did love Phil, in her own distant fashion. And he returned that love - in his own, unspoken way. The years rolled past and in all that time Phil never found someone else that matched his Mark and Melinda never found anyone else she’d even consider a romantic entanglement with. They were stuck in this dance until Bahrain.

Melinda knew that she was now a broken shadow of her former self, a distorted echo that only existed became Phil had done everything in his power to drag her back from that abyss and into the world again. And for the first time in her life she couldn’t bare to be around him, could stand the way she’d sometime catch him staring at her when he thought she wasn’t looking, as if by some miracle she’d turn and smile and go back to being the person she was before. She left the field for an office job and all but completely cut ties with everyone around her, including Phil. At first he’d make a point to go see her in her new cubicle but after being received with only a few words and a frosty impatience had stopped coming and started calling instead. At first it was every week, then once or twice a month, and then at strange intervals that felt more like an afterthought than a friend who genuinely wanted to catch up. In some ways Melinda felt relieved to be left alone and tried to hold onto that feeling whenever the heartbreak threatened to overwhelm her.

And then one day he had called, bubbling with happiness as he told her about this woman, Audrey, who he’d met in Portland. A musician, a soft, delicate woman with doe eyes and a gentle smile. They hadn’t compared Marks yet but he was sure, absolutely sure that this was the one. That after all this time he’d found his soulmate.

After she hung up Melinda didn’t shed a tear. She just drunk her way through an bottle and a half of wine.

But that was nothing compared to the phone call she received a few months later.

Phil was dead. But, then he wasn’t. In many ways Melinda couldn’t quiet wrap her head around it, that there was somehow the technology available to bring people back from the dead, but mostly she didn’t give a damn. Phil was back, he was alive, and that was all that mattered. However, when she was pulled aside by Director Fury and told of Project T.A.H.I.T.I and the side-effects that others had suffered, she felt a faint sense of dread beginning to rise in her gut. Yes, Phil was back, but was he still really Phil? In many ways she detested being the one to monitor his recovery and despised how Fury had - correctly - assumed that Phil would come to her first to be on his new team, but if it meant that she could take care of him, that she could in some way pay him back for how he’d looked after her in Bahrain, then she’d do it.

The first time she’d seen him after the Battle of New York she’d had to hide how her breath was taken away from her. There he was, just the same as ever, and during the first few months on the Bus she didn’t see anything that would indicate that he was a fundamentally changed man. He still told his terrible jokes, still folded his arms when he talked, still fussed over his collectables. With barely any effort the two of them had fallen back into the same pattern that had been lost to them for so long and every night, after she’d made her progress report to Fury, she marvelled at how normal everything had become. It was only on that quiet evening when he’d finally confided in her that he didn’t feel that same as he was before, that he felt vague ‘difference’ within himself, that she realised that his death had effected him a lot more than he let on. When he had unbuttoned his shirt at her request she’d seen for herself the damage Loki’s sceptre had caused.

A long, ugly, jagged scar tore up a sizeable area of what had previously been unmarred skin and Melinda had to hold onto the fabric of his shirt to stop her fingers from trembling. She dragged her eyes away from the scar to look into his eyes and swallowed as he looked down at her with such vulnerability that she had to do everything in her power not to draw him to her and kiss away all his pain there and then.

“You feel different,” she’d finally quaked out. “Because you are different.” Her eyes flicked back down to the scar as she realised something. “Your Mark?”

“Gone.” said Phil simply. Melinda knew that at any other time he would’ve made light of it, but exhaustion and confessions of what was troubling him had stripped him of all artificial nonsense. “It feels so strange not to see it anymore, just that …” He trailed off and grimaced, quickly buttoning his shirt back up again. Melinda stepped back, already missing his warmth.

“Well, at least Audrey already knows,” she said, trying to give some comfort. “At least you found her before your Mark was destroyed.”

Phil started and frowned at her. “Audrey? Audrey and I aren’t soul mates. We didn’t match.”

Melinda was floored. “I … I thought …”

Phil looked down and folded his arms. “I didn’t get around to telling you, did I?” he said softly. “We both have Marks, but they don’t match. I should know better, shouldn’t I? I always keep leaping to conclusions about people before I even compare anything. And now I have nothing to compare.”

Melinda’s heart broke for him. She knew he was a hopeless romantic and no matter how many years had passed by with no sign of his other half, he never gave up hope. But now it was going to be so much more difficult for him to find her when he had nothing to compare, with a whole new struggle to prove what his Mark had been before it was ripped away from him.

Months passed and Phil slowly began to unravel the mystery behind Tahiti - that ‘magical place’. Melinda always shuddered when she heard him parrot that phrase and knew that sooner or later he was going to unearth the circumstances of his resurrection. What she never anticipated was him finding out about her involvement in it, specially not during a HYDRA takeover. She knew him, and knew that he valued loyalty and honesty above all else. She knew what his reaction would’ve been if he’d ever discovered that she’d been reporting on him, but actually having to live through it was hell. He’d shot her, handcuffed her, berated her and dragged her across the emotional coals more than once, more than necessary, to the point where she knew he was actually trying to hurt her. She’d never seen him like this before, with such a mean spirited spitefulness that she couldn’t bare to be in the same room as him. Once they reached Providence she knew it wasn’t entirely about her, that it was the fear and stress of not knowing what happened at ‘Tahiti’, the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D, the emergence of HYDRA and the fact that there was literally no-one else for him to throw his sorrow and rage at. She became the focal point of his anger because it simply had no-where else to go.

That didn’t mean she had to put up with it. He’d told her to leave, and she’d left - only realising later that this decision probably saved her life. At least she still had someone to call on. Some cliche’s are definitely true and when worse comes to worse, you can always rely on your mum.

She didn’t even realise she’d fallen asleep in the car until she was gently woken by a soft hand on her shoulder. “Qiaolian?” Her sleep mussed brain noted that something was wrong, that her mother’s voice sounded worried, and as she came to herself she realise that her face was wet with tears. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Melinda dragged in a ragged breath and swiped away the offending moisture. “Nothing. Everything. I’m tired.”

“You’re more than tired,” said her mother, eyeing her. “Come inside.”

Once she was safe inside her childhood home, with familiar walls and familiar smells all around her and her mother, the one lasting presence in her life, sitting her down in the worn couch in the living room and stroking her hair just like she used to as when she was a child was all it took for years of stress and loss to burst forward and tumble out in one large, sticky mess. She told her mother everything, all the secrets she’d held back over the years either out of pride or a desire not to place any unwanted worries on her sole parent. The whole time her mother held her and whispered soothing nonsense in her ear until the storm had passed and Melinda was able to sit up and be herself once again, and for a while the two of them sat in comfortable silence.

“You know,” her mother had said eventually. “You don’t need to find Maria. You don’t need to do anything from now on. You owe your loyalty to no-one. You can stay here. I have enough contacts to ensure that no-one will bother you.”

Melinda rolled her eyes and gave her mother a shaky smile. “Did you really think I’d yes to that?”

“No,” she answered, smiling. “But I just wanted to let you know that’s an option.”

Melinda sighed and leaned back into the couch. “I need to make things right with Phil, to find out who was behind T.A.H.I.T.I. I know he’ll never forgive me, but -”

“What makes you think that?” interjected her mother. Melinda couldn’t answer, so she continued. “Remember, I’ve known Phil Coulson nearly as long as you, and I’ve seen the way the two of you are together. One thing like this shouldn’t be enough to destroy years of friendship.” Noticing how Melinda flinched at the word ‘friendship’ her mother narrowed her eyes. “Or is it more?”

“It doesn’t matter,” mumbled Melinda. “He has a Mark, I don’t.”

“You know this?”

“I’ve seen it. A circle, with two wavy lines through it, right over his heart. Well, he used to. It’s gone now, after New York …” Melinda trailed off slowly as she begun to realise that her mother suddenly had a frozen expression on her face, as if stunned. “What? What is it?”

“A circle, with two lines, over his heart …” she repeated to herself, her eyes distant and haunted. “Oh, Qiaolian …”

Melinda sat bolt straight, trembling, staring at her mother. “What is it?”

Her mother blinked and focused on her daughter again. “I must show you something.”

Up in her mother’s bedroom Melinda stood to one side as the watched her mum dig into the very back of one of her cupboards and pull out an old, well worn box. It was a box Melinda had seen before, but had never dared open as she knew it contained some of the most precious things her mother valued above everything else. Photos and keepsakes, things that reminded her of her husband, the father Melinda never got the chance to know. She brought it over to the bed, opened it, and motioned for Melinda to join her.

“I never showed you this, and for many years I have had the same argument with myself as to whether or not this was my decision to make. It was not. It was absolutely wrong and I see that now. Qiaolian, I am so sorry.”

From amongst the depths she pulled out an old, yellow stained photo. On the back Melinda could make out some faded scribbles that had both her name, her mother’s name, and her date of birth. She took the photo from her mother with shaking hands and slowly turned it over.

There was her mother, much younger than now, laying on a hospital bed with a new born infant curled up beside her. Her mother’s eyes were downcast as she protectively held her new born daughter in her arms and Melinda knew that it had only been a month since her father had been shot down on a mission before this photo was taken. But what really grabbed her attention, what stole her breath away and shook her to the core, was the tiny but absolutely clear black Mark on that baby’s chest. Right above her heart was a small circle with two wavy lines passing through it.

At first Melinda couldn’t speak. She made a noise that was somewhere between a gasp and a moan and brought her hand up to rub at spot on her chest where her Mark should be. After a few deep breaths she finally managed to croak out, “Why?”

“Because I was so lost in grief at your father’s passing that I thought an Unmarked life would be infinitely better than one where you could be hurt in such an intimate way,” said her mother, tears shinning in her eyes. “I made a stupid and cruel decision to remove your Mark, and that wasn’t mine to make. And then I hide from the truth because I couldn’t bare to admit that I’d done this to my child, my only child. I thought … I thought you were happy, Qiaolian. I thought that I had saved you from such agony but I was wrong, I was so wrong and I am so very, very sorry.”

Melinda dropped the photo and threw herself into her mother’s arms and this time they both wept until there was nothing more left. By the end of it she felt as though she’d been drained of some kind of poison, as though they’d been healed in some strange way. She had been Marked and now she had proof of it, and the revelation that this Mark matched Phil’s was … not overwhelming. In all honestly Melinda didn’t feel shocked or angry or any of the more volatile emotions. She certainly didn’t feel surprised. What she felt was an amazing sense of peace. Phil was her soulmate, her Match. Now it was only a matter whether he would ever be as happy to hear this news as she was.

After tracking down Maria and quite literally digging up the evidence she needed Melinda found herself on the other side of the country in a shabby hotel room where the last straggling threads of what had been an elite S.H.I.E.L.D team now hide themselves. She knew they were out by the pool and decided to wait in Phil’s room until he came back. When he walked in, his crumpled suit and loose necktie a far cry from his usual immaculate self, she was glad she was leaning against the bedside table. For a moment he just stared and she didn’t trust herself to speak. Then with a sigh he simply breathed out, “I was hoping you’d come back.”

She felt herself sag in relief and made a note to tell her mother that she was right about one thing at least. Together they watched through the report that Coulson himself had made about the T.A.H.I.T.I Project, how the program had run under his supervision and had been scrapped at his insistence. Melinda wasn’t exactly sure how he’d react this this news, wasn’t exactly sure how many more of this life-changing revelations they could take. He seemed to take it well enough but with Ward being HYDRA, Garrett on the run with some of the most dangerous technology in the world and a rag-tag team to assemble, it just didn’t seem right to bring up the matter of their Mark’s just yet, though the photograph was burning a hole in her jacket pocket.

For a few minutes after the recording ended Phil just sat in front of the dark computer screen, silently processing all that he’d just heard and after a while Melinda felt as if she were intruding. However, as she made a move to leave Phil jerked back the life. “Don’t go. Please.”

Melinda stopped, turned to face him, and waited.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “What I said and did to you … I was mad, and I was mean.”

She shrugged and tried to wave it off. “It’s -”

“Please don’t say it’s okay, because it’s not,” he pleaded. He hunched over and rubbed at his face. “I’ve always prided myself on not striking out in anger but that’s exactly what I did to you, and that was so wrong. And cruel. And I will do everything I can to make it up to you. Melinda, you … you mean a lot to me, too.”

She felt her heart pounding so hard in her chest she was surprised he didn’t notice it. How had she missed this all these years? Of course they were soulmates, she could feel the truth of it in her very bones. But now was just not the best time to talk about it. So she simply gave one of her small smiles, ducked her head and left the room. What she didn’t notice was the stricken look on Phil’s face when she left without a word.

Phil might not be one to strike out in anger but Melinda wasn’t quite so magnanimous and couldn’t deny how good it really felt to beat Ward down like the snivelling little insect that he was. Garrett was gone and a whole host of people who had been controlled by the ‘incentive’s’ program had been freed and returned home. They were now at a brand new base, The Playground, where the only dark cloud was Fitz and the uncertainty of his recovery. Melinda herself didn’t have any doubt in the technician; she knew he’d pull through.

The very last thing she expected was to hear a quiet tapping at her door in the early hours of the morning. When she opened it and saw Phil her heart leapt at first, but as she slowly took in the rest of him, his dust covered night clothes, sweat streaked face and the slightly wild look in his eyes, she realised something was wrong.

“Melinda,” he said, his voice strange and distant. “I need help.”

They spent the next few hours destroying all evidence of what Phil had scratched into the wall, and then going and destroying the glass screen Garrett had vandalised earlier. While they worked they never spoke a word. When it was all done Melinda took Phil’s hand and lead him back to her bedroom, closing and locking the door behind them.

“Maybe it’s a one off,” she said lamely. Judging from the look he shot her, he didn’t believe it either.

He sat on the edge of her bed with his face hidden in his hands, a slight tremor going through him every now and then. They both knew that this much be a reaction to the GH.325 that both he and Garrett were injected with. They both knew that there had been severe reactions to the procedure during the T.A.H.I.T.I Project, but they had thought that with such a long time passing that Phil was unaffected. Looks like they were both wrong.

For a long time neither of them said anything, him on the bed and her by the door. After a while she noticed that the tremors were becoming more frequent and with a start she realised that he was crying. Without a thought she flew to his side, wrapped her arms around him and cradled his head to her heart. He never made a noise but she could feel moisture damping her shirt and she held him, ran her fingers through his hair and across his shoulders until he was again able to sit up and look at her. His eyes were red and swollen and he was still covered in plaster dust and she had never so badly wanted to kiss him.

“What’s that?”

His voice rasped on the question, but it was clear enough. She followed his gaze to her bedside table and started when she realised that she’d left the photo of her and her mother propped up next to the lamp, where it was lit up in full view. Phil lent over and plucked it up, staring unblinking at it the whole time. She was sure that he recognised her mother and so it wouldn’t take a huge leap for him to figure out who the baby was. And what was on her chest.

He looked up at her, dumbfounded, his mouth opening and closing as if he wanted to say something but didn’t know exactly what. She spoke for both of them.

“After Providence I went home. Long story short, my mother decided that it was finally time to tell me that she’d had my Mark removed just after I was born. I think … well, that’s got to be the only evidence that I ever had one.”

Phil blinked rapidly and then looked back down at the photo that he held in trembling hands. He swallowed hard but still didn’t say anything and soon the silence became agonising.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, but there never seemed to be a good time,” she said in a hurry. “And then I didn’t know how or -”

She was abruptly cut off when Phil dropped the photo to the floor, grabbed her face with his hands and kissed her with all the passion that years of longing can create. Melinda responded in kind, pulling him close, tasting and touching every inch of him that had been denied to her for so very long, her heart feeling as if it were about to burst out of her chest while at the same time she was close enough to feel Phil’s own heartbeat, strong and fast beneath her palm.

When they finally pulled apart he started rambling straight away. “Oh God, I knew it was you, it was always you, it had to be. It was always you. Oh God, I thought … I thought after everything, I’d lost you.”

Melinda kissed him once more, quick and sweet. “You’re never going to loose me, Phil.”

Phil groaned and buried his head in head in her neck. “All those years we could’ve … and now, you get me like this. This broken … wreck …”

Melinda pulled back sharply to stare into his eyes. “Don’t you say that. Don’t you ever say anything like that, ever.” When the shadow of doubt refused to leave his eyes she decided the best plan of action would be to kiss him until it was gone. And it seemed to work.

Hours later, just as the base was beginning to come alive with the sounds of people heading to the kitchen or the showers, Melinda and Phil were still curled up together in her bed, exhausted, fully clothed, but still reluctant to remove their hands from each other.

Phil spoke. “I find this whole thing strange. I’m not sure anyone will believe us,” he murmured. “How can we prove to other’s that we’re Matched without our Marks?”

Melinda smiled and turned so she could kiss and nip at his jaw. “I find it strange that you think I’d care what other’s believe.”

“You’re quite right.”

They didn’t get out of bed until a frazzled Skye started pounding on Melinda’s door, shouting about Coulson being missing from his room.


End file.
